Silent Fear Lies Behind Fertility Furor : Medicine: Couples who received allegedly stolen eggs or embryos from UC clinics do not want their lives intruded upon. They especially do not want to lose their children.

IRVINE —  They are on the other side of the egg-swapping equation--the silent side, clinging to their privacy with white knuckles.

Although couples who allege that their eggs or embryos were snatched by renowned physicians in the UC fertility scandal have made no secret of their outrage, those who have received these “donations” have lain low, hoping to duck the inevitable cross-fire.

And that may be the smartest thing to do, say attorneys, ethicists and others familiar with the fiasco.

Though possibly shocked and angry at being ensnared in one of the ugliest medical controversies in University of California history, these couples fear having their family lives dissected, probed and intruded upon. Most of all, some are terrified about losing children they went to such desperate lengths to conceive, attorneys say.

“Just imagine [recipients] with children who they’ve bonded with for years and all of a sudden there is a fear in both them and perhaps their children that someone is going to take this precious jewel away from them,” said Larry Feldman, an attorney representing two couples who believe their eggs were stolen and implanted in other women.

“It would be very unusual for them to want to voluntarily get involved in this mess,” he said.

UC officials allege that as many as 40 women were involved in improper egg transfers at fertility clinics at UC Irvine, UC San Diego and AMI/Garden Grove medical centers. About half those women may be recipients of misappropriated eggs, resulting in the birth of as many as eight children, officials allege. The three doctors accused of misconduct deny knowingly engaging in wrongdoing.

For the undisclosed portion of recipients who live abroad, in such countries as Mexico and Panama, the strategy of choice may be to stay put until the crisis blows over. Attorneys say foreign parents may be legally untouchable. Even in California, family law attorneys say, courts tend to resist external challenges to existing families and may not favor genetic testing to establish the children’s biological origins.

But that won’t keep couples who feel robbed from trying to set things straight. Debbie and John Challender of Corona, who suspect that a Newport Beach family received their embryos--Debbie’s eggs fertilized by John’s sperm--and gave birth to twins have called for DNA testing of the youngsters.

The Challenders, who have an adopted child and one who was the result of a fertility procedure, will not seek custody of the twins but “would like the gift of knowing the progress of their children,” said their attorney, Theodore S. Wentworth. “We would like to follow their ups and their downs.”

Wentworth complained that his efforts on behalf of the Challenders to negotiate some resolution have been met with “aggressive rejection.”

“You just want to punch him,” Wentworth said of the Newport Beach couple’s attorney, Steven Militzok, after an unproductive meeting.

Militzok said his clients just want to be left alone.

“My clients have no interest in a public debate regarding a very private matter,” he said. “My clients have their children’s well-being to consider.”

The debate intensified when the Challenders expressed dismay that the children are being raised in the Jewish faith, rather than as Christians. The Challenders also want the twins to know they are not biologically related to the Newport Beach couple.

“The insensitive remarks of Mr. Wentworth and his clients have caused my clients incredible agony,” Militzok said in a letter to The Times. “Implicit threats concerning the custody of my clients’ children and derogatory statements as to my clients’ religious persuasion have made every recent moment of my clients’ lives a living hell.”

It is unlikely that recipients’ worst fears--loss of their youngsters--will come true, lawyers say.

For those recipients outside the country, there may be no way to compel them to supply evidence or appear in court.

“If we were talking about accusing people of some crime, the matter would be straightforward,” said Edwin Smith, a professor of law and international relations at USC. “You would pursue extradition.”

But if the alleged recipients are named as civil defendants, or as witnesses in civil cases, “even if the stars were smiling upon you it would be intensely complicated,” Smith said. “My instincts are telling me impossible.”

Most countries do not have laws such as those in the United States that require people involved in civil cases to provide evidence, Smith said.

Walter G. Koontz, an attorney representing three clients who believe their eggs were misappropriated, is not at all hopeful that foreign recipients will cooperate in donors’ efforts to piece together what happened.

“Let’s say this person paid a lot of money to get an embryo, supposedly when doctors got all the necessary consents,” he said. “Then they find out, by the way, that’s not true and it looks like some American lawyers think they have the ability to take that child. You better believe they’re not going to participate. And in a foreign country, they’ve got a greater level of insurance from a guy like me.”

Even in California, recipients of allegedly ill-gotten eggs or embryos are unlikely to lose custody of their children because the courts are increasingly reluctant to remove children from happy homes, several family law attorneys said. In any case, the child’s best interests are likely to be the “tiebreaker,” said Scott Altman, a USC family law attorney.

Recipients may be spooked by court rulings against surrogate mothers who have tried to assert maternal rights after bearing children for others, lawyers said. But there is no comparison because at the UC clinics, there was never any contract between the couples.

“Both [sets of parents] were victims,” Altman said. “Everyone was deceived.”

Attorneys speculated that many donors will seek something short of full custody: They probably will want to find out for certain if they have biological children elsewhere. They may want the information to substantiate their legal claims and to prove damages, especially when medical records are spotty. Or they may want to quell nagging doubts.

Even this may be a losing battle, attorneys said. California courts are unlikely to order DNA tests based on a request from another couple, said John Robertson, a University of Texas law professor specializing in bioethics and reproductive issues.

“The way the California statute reads . . . the child born to a married couple during their marriage is irrefutably believed to be the child of that couple,” he said.

One or the other parent can challenge that, he said, but the issue generally is not open to challenge by outsiders. This could mean that some donors will never learn whether their eggs produced a child.

At UC San Diego, officials say patients of Dr. Ricardo H. Asch may have received donations from more than one source. Feldman said one of his clients unknowingly donated eggs to a woman who gave birth in Mexico, but it is not clear whether the egg came from Feldman’s client. The matter probably won’t be settled without DNA testing, he said.

“I think there’s a good possibility that a significant amount of this is going to remain a mystery” unless recipients come forward voluntarily, Koontz said.

UC Irvine officials have been largely unsuccessful in coaxing recipients--or donors--to help them solve the giant puzzle involving Asch and his two former partners at the university.

Only three of about two dozen patients who were sent notification letters have come in for appointments to discuss their cases. At least half a dozen alleged donors have made their discontent known by filing legal claims against the university and the doctors.

Despite their hopes to stay out of the fray, recipients are not likely to remain untouched, legally or emotionally.

Families who live in the United States could be ordered to take DNA tests for the limited purpose of determining whether eggs were stolen, several attorneys said. Others speculated that in cases where eggs or embryos clearly were stolen, donor couples may be granted limited rights to visitation.

Some recipients, especially those who did not conceive, may step forward of their own volition to stake a legal claim against the university and the doctors for emotional damages, attorneys familiar with the scandal said. Many recipients face a strong prospect of being sued--and perhaps being accused of knowingly participating in the alleged egg-swapping plot, the lawyers said.

Although the Challenders have not sued the Newport Beach couple, Wentworth has suggested that the recipients might bear some responsibility for the allegedly improper swap.

“The Challenders had nothing to do with this. They are absolutely innocent in the tragedy of their children being raised by another couple,” Wentworth said.

“The couple who are raising the children . . . were not part of the [formal] donor program, and that makes it very hard for the Challenders. The Challenders feel as though anyone who has gotten embryos or eggs should have been part of a formal donor program so they knew what they were receiving came from an appropriate source.”

Militzok, the Newport Beach couple’s attorney, called those statements “meritless and incredibly cruel and self-serving.”

His clients, he said, “are truly among the most aggrieved victims of this tragedy.”

Perhaps most tragic, ethicists and others say, is that both sets of alleged victims--the donors and the recipients--are pitted against one another.

“One side feels robbed and one feels cheated,” said Andrea Shrednick, a USC medical psychologist who provides therapy to infertile couples.

Donors, particularly those who have not been able to become parents, may feel that recipients--knowingly or not--reaped an incredible benefit from their loss. Recipients “fear that this unknown angry person is going to come back and take their child.”

Perhaps the best way to defuse the hostility is to remind both sides of how each must feel, Shrednick said. Each once had a desperate desire to conceive, she said, and each can understand what it would mean to lose that chance, or that child.

“I would like to think it could be dealt with in a nonadversarial way,” Shrednick said. “The two parents are not adversaries--they did not steal from one another, they had this done to them. They were all victims. . . . Once you get into name-calling and adversarial relationships and a tug of war, nobody’s going to win, least of all the child.”

But she acknowledged that therapeutic approaches and amicable resolutions probably are not in the cards.

“You’re not going to see it. . . . There are going to be lawyers involved and lawsuits. It makes it all that much worse. It’s hard to believe we’re fighting over people. Who’s thinking about the kids?”